Idaho trip

I took a trip to Idaho to see my family again before leaving for New Zealand. My parents were out of town (on a month-long European cruise!) but I got to see everyone else.

Dusty came over one night with a project: he helps run a science camp during the summer, and the kids do experiments with devices made of Legos (which is EXACTLY the kind of science camp I would have loved to attend when I was a kid)! He wanted us to help put together his toys so the kids could start working on the projects right away, instead of taking a few days to build the project. It was so fun! Dusty has the biggest Lego collection I've ever seen, with pieces that I had no idea even existed. He had a piece of software that he put on our laptops (we had about six computers sitting on the table) that told us what pieces to put where.
















Chad and Dez recently bought a couple of jetskis, so when they took their kids to play at a nearby lake, Byron and Jemayla and I came along. Jemayla took me out on one of the jetskis, and although she was a wonderful driver, I was terrified. I'm scared of water--a fear I'm going to have to overcome soon, now that I'll be living in the land of the water sports! We had been there about an hour when a huge storm blew in: winds, rain, hail, etc. The sad thing was that the storm was only over the lake; we could see blue sky about a mile away on either side, but right above the lake there were ominous clouds that didn't seem to be letting up. We huddled in a corner of the shelter trying to stay out of the hail, and finally the storm let up enough for us to get the jetskis out of the water and go home. (Byron and Jemayla went out to play in the storm...because they're crazy.)









































We also had a party at Mom & Dad's condo, even though they weren't there (because that's what you're supposed to do while the parents are gone, right???). When Byron and Jemayla and I arrived at the condo to start setting things up, we found the following stacked together on the front doorstep: an empty cardboard egg container, a carefully cut two-liter soda bottle containing egg residue in the bottom, and a homemade rhubarb pie. Nobody in the family took credit for the little tableau. I'm sure there was a logical explanation, but we never figured it out. We decided not to serve the rhubarb pie at the party--we didn't want to poison anyone. We all had a good time being together, eating, playing Dance Dance Revolution, and (in the kids' case) running wildly around the backyard.